170 SENSATION, IDEATION, 



ceive a being possessed of feeling and desire, and, at th? 

 pame time, without a knowledge of any object upon which 

 his affections may be employed, and without a conscious- 

 ness of these affections themselves." 



Some highly significant facts have, indeed, already been 

 mentioned, tending to show that mere organic discrimina- 

 tions or Cognitions may be manifested by plants, lower 

 animals, or even parts of animals under conditions in 

 which it is not warrantable to assume the co- existence of 

 anything like that which we know as Consciousness or 

 Feeling. We have seen some and shall find more reason 

 for believing that Feeling, in its ordinary acceptation, is 

 gradually superadded, in higher forms of animal life, as 

 a newly-begotten accompaniment of nerve actions which 

 hitherto, in lower forms, have been unendowed with any 

 distinct subjective phasis. At first we may have the exist- 

 ence of unconscious impressions and mere organic dis- 

 criminations ; while afterwards, during the evolution of 

 the animal series, and consequently of nerve centres, we 

 suppose the superaddition to some nervous actions of a 

 more and more definite subjective phasis, answering to 

 lower grades of what each of us knows in himself only 

 during processes of Sensation or Perception more especially. 



We must now look, from our human point of view, to 

 what is included under these latter terms. James Mill 

 says,* "What we commonly mean when we use the 

 terms SENSATION or phenomena of Sensation, are the 

 feelings which we have by the five senses Smell, Taste, 

 Hearing, Touch, and Sight. These are the feelings from 

 which we derive our notions of what we denominate the 

 external world the things by which we are surrounded. 

 When we smell a rose there is a particular- 

 feeling, a particular consciousness, distinct from all others^ 



* " Analysis of the Human Mind," 1829, vol. i. pp. 3 and 7. 



